RELO Constituent Processing, Limiting Duplicates Created

Jill Freidmutter · April 2018

Hi Wonderful Community Members,

Our annual peer-to-peer fundraiser opens for registration in a month. This will be our second year on TeamRaiser. I developed the attached gameboard to use when bringing constituents through RELO. (I actually have a game piece that I move around so I don't forget where I am in the process in case I am interrupted.) Can you see any places where we are being too cautious and could change the process to limit the number of duplicates created? In case it makes a difference, spouses may have one joint record or two individual records linked as spouses.

with much gratitude, Jill

Leo Coronado · April 2018

Hi Jill,

Thank you for sharing your process diagram!

We do use RELO plugin, but we opted to BULK process our constituent and gift records due to the number of records that we process ( avg: 900 constituent records/day). We do clean our duplicates on a regular basis using Merge-O-Matic.

Would you mind sharing the number of constituent and gift records that you process a day?

Thanks!

Leo

Austen Brown · April 2018

Jill Freidmutter:

Hi Wonderful Community Members,

Our annual peer-to-peer fundraiser opens for registration in a month. This will be our second year on TeamRaiser. I developed the attached gameboard to use when bringing constituents through RELO. (I actually have a game piece that I move around so I don't forget where I am in the process in case I am interrupted.) Can you see any places where we are being too cautious and could change the process to limit the number of duplicates created? In case it makes a difference, spouses may have one joint record or two individual records linked as spouses.

with much gratitude, Jill

When you download a gift through RELO do you committ it to RE that same day, or do you wait? If you wait to commit gifts to RE and you are merging constituents the day after you downloaded the gift into batch, this could cause issues in Batch. You may have to go through and reselect the constituent on each gift they have listed in the batch. If you commit the gift prior to merging constituents your process will be fine.

Thanks for the flow chart, it was very nicely put together.

Jill Freidmutter · April 2018

Hi Leo,

Over the next 3 months we will process approximately 6,000 gifts. I'm not sure how many constitutent records. Now it may be 5 gifts a day. The day after our swim, there could be a couple of thousand waiting to be entered and processed.

best, Jill

Jill Freidmutter · April 2018

Hi Austen,

Great question! We process constituents, then process the gifts and commit the batch, then merge duplicates after the gifts are in the (duplicate) record.

best, Jill

Mark Boehme 3 · April 2018

Jill,

I am going to be implementing RELO this week and I have been trying to figure out how to both avoid and resolve the duplicates. Thank you so much for posting this! This is exactly what I was needing to wrap my head around this new process.

Thank you, again!

Mark

Kelly Martin 2 · September 2018

We are evaluating RELO with TeamRaiser. Jill, do you look at each of the records to make these decisions before pulling them through integration? Just curious how you process the 'couple thousand'.

Thank you!

Kelly

Julie Hiland · September 2018

Thank you for posting this, Jill! It's incredibly thorough, and I'm tempted to walk it into our Sustained Giving Director's office to show him that it's not just "press a button and it's done" kind of work.

Jill Freidmutter · September 2018

Hi Kelly,

Yes, we look at each record in the RELO Connector so that we don't lose emails or spouses in RE! As I understand it, if a record is matched and we bulk process, all LO info overwrites the RE info. If the RE record is a joint record and only one person gave through LO/TeamRaiser, the spouse would be deleted in RE! And of course, other home phones, cell phones or emails in the RE record will be deleted if different than the donation form. (Our RELO Connector is set to match on first and last name.) We choose to save those because they may have signed up for the e-newsletter using one email address and donate using a different email address.

best regards, Jill

Ranel Porter 2 · September 2018

Jill,

Why do you merge later? After answering "Yes" to the "Are you sure?" question, RELO allows you to check or uncheck various items and then merges. Why not allow RELO to merge after you check/uncheck the appropriate items?

Thanks,

Ranel

Marie Harris 2 · May 2020

Thank you for sharing your process diagram! I have a quick question.. what fields do you include in your constituent matching options?

Thanks

Marie

Patti Posey · May 2020

Great job! We have the exact same process from beginning to end. We don't do any bulk processing. Every record is individually checked in all three tabs. It's a long process but the way people enter their information in Luminate is why we check every record.

Patti Posey

Stamford Hospital Foundation

Michael Bober · May 2020

I really like the diagram you created. We have been dealing with duplicate records and data hiccups ever since integrating with Luminate. The flow of data through the RELO plugin is far from seamless. We are now using the free duplication tool in RE NXT since it gives a nice side by side comparison when merging records. Also, we have to bulk process due to our volume, but we have now moved to a system of data checking/clean up in the actual batch before committing gifts to RE.

Rhonda Patterson Sherrod · May 2020

Hi Michael,

I am managing a fairly new team of coordinators who process donations via RELO. Is is possible you could share your "data checking/clean up" procedure? We also have to process in bulk due to volume and would love to get some helpful tips regarding this.

Regards,

Rhonda

Michael Bober · May 2020

Hi Rhonda,

In the RELO Plugin we pull in all of the Constituent Information first on a daily basis going from right to left - Unmatched, Matched, Linked. We are quite cautious with pulling in gifts that are Unmatched and Matched since we do not want to create duplicates or redundant info. into RE. Linked is usually more straight forward and easy to bulk process without too much checking.. Then we move on to pulling in all of the gift batches. We separate all of the Recurring Gifts in a separate batch since this is easier for us to manage. Of course, all of the batches are also driven by the gift date so we can reconcile with FE and the Finance. As I said earlier, we double check info in the batch before committing them. Things like All Caps, Salutations, Donor Typos...It is a little more work but it keeps are data clean.

Does this make sense?

Rhonda Patterson Sherrod · May 2020

Hi Michael,

Yes, this all makes sense as I follow a similar procedure for processing RELO transactions. Segmenting the recurring gifts is a process I may adopt. Thank you for responding and sharing your insights and procedures. I am sure you are very busy during these times.

Take care and be well.

All the best,

Rhonda

Cheryl Segear 2 · March 2021

Michael, are you saying you are using the RELO connector with RENXT? Just asking since we are being told we cannot use RELO with RENXT and are having some issues with Omatic meeting our needs. Thanks and sorry if I misunderstood your comment. Thanks so much!

RELO Constituent Processing, Limiting Duplicates Created

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